A California woman is suing her former employer, a cosmetics company, after she says she was fired for being pregnant and refusing to consider aborting her unborn child.
According My News LA, Vanessa Campos said her supervisor at Xtetic World Inc. told her that they wanted someone to commit to being at work full-time. The supervisor suggested that the 25-year-old have an abortion – the very mention of which insulted Campos, according to her lawsuit. Campos said she was excited to be pregnant.
Campos filed a lawsuit against Xtetic World on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the report states. The lawsuit accuses the cosmetics company of wrongful termination, pregnancy discrimination, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination harassment and retaliation and a violation of the state Government Code regarding pregnancy disability leave, according to the report.
The news report details what happened:
Campos began working at Xtetic World in March 2015. Her lawyer, Timothy Kearns, said her job title was social media coordinator.
The plaintiff found out the next month she was pregnant, according to her court papers. She was happy and wanted to let her new employer know the news so they could make future scheduling adjustments while she was on leave, the suit states.
But Campos alleges that when she told a manager identified only as Mira about the news last April 14, the other woman said, “We need somebody who is committed to being here full-time. Have you thought about getting an abortion?”
“(Campos) was shocked and frankly sickened at that statement,” according to the suit, which says she told her boss in reply, “No, I plan on keeping my baby. What you said was not right.”
Campos was fired two days later, even though no one told her she had done anything wrong at work or been disciplined in writing, according to her lawsuit.
It is “clearly no coincidence” that Campos was fired so soon after informing the manager that she was pregnant and being told in response that the company wanted someone to commit to being at work full-time, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit does not specify the amount in damages that Campos is seeking, the report states. Campos gave birth to her daughter last fall and has struggled to find a new job, according to the report.
Xtetic World describes itself as a boutique aesthetic solution company that offers the most prestigious brands in pharmaceutical skin care. It did not respond to the news agency’s request for comment.
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LifeNews has reported stories of other women also facing pressure from their employers to have abortions. In 2012, a teenage mother sued the Texas doctor who she worked for after he allegedly said her pregnancy “wasn’t a good image for him.”
In 2015 in England, a woman named Teri Cumlin won a similar lawsuit after a court ruled she was wrongly fired from a fundraising firm after she refused to have an abortion, LifeNews reported. Cumlin reported being pressured by her boss, Mark Robertson, to have an abortion.
Cumlin said Robertson “started shouting in my face, telling me how stupid I was and that they wouldn’t be able to keep me on. It was awful.” The court awarded her £12,000 (roughly $19,000).
